Exploring the psychological underpinnings of the moral mandate effect: Motivated reasoning, group differentiation, or anger?

Mullen, Elizabeth; Skitka, Linda J.

doi:10.1037/0022-3514.90.4.629

Cited by 209 publications

(194 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…For example, in their research on 'moral spillover', Mullen and Nadler (2008) found that when participants were asked to summarize a court case involving a doctor who performed an illegal late-term abortion, pro-choice participants were more likely to steal pens provided by the experimenter if the story indicated that the doctor had been found guilty than if he had been found innocent. The researchers hypothesized that because participants read about the legitimation of a moral position with which they disagreed, they reacted, or 'acted out', by engaging in immoral behavior (also see Mullen & Skitka, 2006). In Experiment 1, participants in the relativist condition may have cheated more because the relativist argument defended and legitimated a moral position that they found morally reprehensible, to which they reacted by engaging in immoral behavior themselves.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exposure to moral relativism compromises moral behavior

Tage

Holyoak

2013

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

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• We examined whether exposure to moral relativism would compromise moral behavior.• Participants who read a relativist argument were more likely to cheat.• Participants who read an absolutist moral definition were less willing to steal.• The subjectivity of morality implied by relativism appears to compromise behavior. a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o Across two studies we investigated the relationship between moral relativism versus absolutism and moral behavior. In Experiment 1, we found that participants who read a relativist argument for tolerating female genital mutilation were more likely to cheat to win an incentivized raffle than participants who read an absolutist argument against female genital mutilation, or those in a control condition. In Experiment 2, participants who read a definition of morality phrased in absolutist terms expressed less willingness to engage in petty theft than those who read a definition of morality phrased in relativist terms, or those in a control condition. Experiment 2 also provided evidence that effects were not due to absolutist arguments signaling that fewer behaviors are morally permissible, nor to relativist arguments defending more disagreeable moral positions. Rather, the content of the philosophical positions themselves-the fact that relativism describes morality as subjective and culturally-historically contingent, whereas absolutism describes morality as objective and universal-makes individuals more likely to engage in immoral behaviors when exposed to moral relativism compared to moral absolutism.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exposure to moral relativism compromises moral behavior

Tage

Holyoak

2013

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

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“…Identifying a situation in which D dwarfs B, Skitka and colleagues argue that procedural fairness assessments are of little importance for individuals who have a strong moral conviction on the outcome. 17 Mullen and Skitka 2006;Skitka 2002. Another alternative discussed in the literature is that outcome favorability interacts with subjective procedural fairness assessments to mitigate negative reactions to an unfavorable outcome (e.g., Bianchi et al 2015).…”

Section: How Outcome Favorability Intervenes In the Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconsidering the Role of Procedures for Decision Acceptance

Esaiasson¹,

Persson²,

Gilljam³

et al. 2016

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

136

169

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Procedural fairness theory posits that the way in which authoritative decisions are made strongly impacts people's willingness to accept them. This article challenges this claim by contending that democratic governments can achieve little in terms of acceptance of policy decisions by the procedural means at their disposal. Instead, outcome favorability is the dominant determinant of decision acceptance. The article explicates that while central parts of procedural fairness theory are true, outcome favorability is still overwhelmingly the strongest determinant of individuals' willingness to accept authoritative decisions. It improves on previous research by locating all key variables into one causal model and testing this model using appropriate data. Findings from a large number of experiments (both vignette and field) reproduce the expected relationships from previous research and support the additional predictions.

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“…Of these 28, 22 expressed the view that the organization managed this process well, two felt that the organization had generally not managed it well, and four provided mixed responses suggesting that on some occasions it was managed well and on others badly. What this meant was the organizational narrative had constructed the meaning of the changes such that job loss and financial misfortune themselves were not seen as a matter that concerned ethics -the only 'moral mandate' (Mullen and Skitka, 2006) that the employees held their organization to was the requirement for people to be treated fairly on departure. In this case, the perception of a high level of procedural justice reduced the sense of adversity among both those retrenched and those who remained (Brockner et al, 1994) while apparently being used instrumentally (rather than ethically) to control employee behaviour (Fortin and Fellenz, 2008).…”

Section: The Refiguration Of V-tech and The Limiting Of Ethical Concernsmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘If I Should Fall From Grace…’: Stories of Change and Organizational Ethics

2009

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ABSTRACT. Although studies in organizational storytelling have dealt extensively with the relationship between narrative, power and organizational change, little attention has been paid to the implications of this for ethics within organizations. This article addresses this by presenting an analysis of narrative and ethics as it relates to the practice of organizational downsizing. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur's theories of narrative and ethics, we analyze stories of organizational change reported by employees and managers in an organization that had undergone persistent downsizing. Our analysis maintains that the presence of a dominant story that seeks to legitimate organizational change also serves to normalize it, and that this, in turn, diminishes the capacity for organizations to scrutinize the ethics of their actions. We argue that when organizational change narratives become singularized through dominant forms of emplotment, ethical deliberation and responsibility in organizations are diminished. More generally, we contend that the narrative closure achieved by the presence of a dominant narrative amongst employees undergoing organizational change is antithetical to the openness required for ethical questioning.

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Exploring the psychological underpinnings of the moral mandate effect: Motivated reasoning, group differentiation, or anger?

Cited by 209 publications

References 55 publications

Exposure to moral relativism compromises moral behavior

Exposure to moral relativism compromises moral behavior

Reconsidering the Role of Procedures for Decision Acceptance

‘If I Should Fall From Grace…’: Stories of Change and Organizational Ethics

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